Dr Brian Klass and ‘Democracy’

A Dr. preaching neo-orientalism, imperialism and patronizing other countries, brandishing an empty term ("democracy) of the West, i.e. the capitalist, imperialist democracy of the Western powers that we have seen in practice not only in wars and occupations, but in IMF adjustment programmes, in global capitalism's uneven development, in plunder by corporations, in NGOs working with repressive regimes and perpetuating power structure, in Western powers working with local regimes in aborting, diverting or co-opting uprisings or confining it to the parliamentary capitalist democracy, oppression within the undemocratic European Union itself, level of corruption on an unprecedented scale, driving down wages, undermining unions (even banning people from joining a union), gambling with pensions, corporatization of education, undermining academic freedom, a development of an oligarchy and a mediaocracy, depolitization, passivity and narcissism, a plague called identity politics instead, the rise of the far-right as a consequence of neo-liberalism and a crisis of the nation-state.

You don't have to read the book. The rhetoric of the West's mission to spread "democracy" and the title of the post are quite telling. According to Dr. Brian Klass's "democracy" is when "citizens have a meaningful voice in determining how governments make decisions about their lives." That is the narrow, mainstream concept of democracy that we hear everyday. That implies that Western citizens through the voting process are "determining how governments make decisions about their lives".

Dr Klass condemns using violence to spread democracy. The use of violence is not the main and the initial means of "spreading democracy". "Democracy" (i.e., free market and privatisation, stability, political dependency, debt, monopoly of the media, etc) has been imposed through peaceful means: unequal trade deals, economic adjustment programmes, perpetuation of uneven development, geopolitical interests, aborting people uprisings, support of the "moderates" against the progressives and the leftists, propgating the bourgeois concept of women's freedom and culturalizing social antagonisms,

The argument of "spreading democracy" is inherently flawd because reactionary powers cannot by their nature spread democracy. The history of imperialism in the Middle East, Latin America and Indonesia, for instance, is rife with the Western war on democracy.

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The Qarmatians (Al-Qaramita)

By Nadeem Mahjoub Documentary film-makers G. Troeller and M. C. Defarge once asked a cabinet minister in South Yemen, why socialistic ideas were so readily acceptable in that part of the Arab world. He replied: “Because we have been communists for a thousand years! My mother was Qarmatian.” Official Muslim scholars and clerics, and many so-called moderates (whether individuals or groups) oppose sedition ( fitna ). Tensions and contradictions in society should be solved peacefully and even if the ruler was unjust and impious, it is generally accepted he should still be obeyed, for any kind of order is better than anarchy and sedition. “The tyranny of a sultan for a hundred years causes less damage than one year’s tyranny exercised by the subjects against one another.” Revolt was justified only against a ruler who clearly went against the command of God and His prophet.” 1 Here we look at not what happened in the minds of people who call for calm, oppose dissent and preach the re...

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"A second position argues against transition, which is transitology itself. It is well known—especially among economists—as the sudden mobilization of a considerable mass of experts who are generally foreigners,generally Western, who come to preach the good word and to propose ready-made models of democracy. The science of the transition has become a financial windfall, a market. And the word transition has of course become a reflex of language, a term of reference, a call for tenders ( appel d’offres ) to which the whole society was supposed to respond. Consequently, the reticence that one can express is the following: our history is framed, transition is a heteronomy. Every democratic revolution is henceforth supposed to take a unique, imposed path, which is, at the same time, indistinctly democratic and liberal (or neoliberal). A more or less non-“negotiable” package. It is necessary to highlight the imposed character (and imposed from the outside) of this coming to t...

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"Egypt is no longer the heart of the Arab world"

Putting a Racist in Their Place

UK

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US

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